Posts by Jet-Pack (IPACS)

  • How to map controls to individual flaps/aerelons

    Quote from Jürgen N.

    As the mixers in RC7 are fixed and not accessible you have to create a separate file in the transmitter for the model concerned where you mix your functions within before you send it to RC7.

    Concerning "Crow":

    This function is a fake! In reality quite normal spoilers are used! But not shown, of course.

    But visible in function Ctrl/F12

    Rgds Jürgen

    This is not a fake, this is the extra drag not modelled by the aerowing itself. In reality you'd have quite a strong vortex going off at the point where the aileron meets the flap.

    Plus the flap effectiveness is only realistic to a certain flap deflection, the high flap deflection used in this butterfly configuration require additional drag to account for the separation of the airflow. This is at the edge of the normal physics, in reality you see 3D effects that largely differ from those of the normal wing, so its not a surprise additional drag is required physically. This effect is also non linear, etc. so its a good thing we have that extra drag to give a more realistic, real live like performance.

  • Request for Improvements

    Ah, ok.

    So you'd like to have a faster way to trim for level flight. But since you still want to take off at the beginning we can't just load your cruise trim setting, the aircraft would trimmed to far nose down to get airborne.

    If you keep the autopilot engaged the pitch trim should be set after a couple of seconds, the other axes are not trimmed by the autopilot (real world aircraft don't do this, so we're not simulating it either)

    Not initializing the aircraft in a trimmed state would just mean you're crashing more often, since the trim varies quite a lot for larger aircraft. E.g. the learjet changes from something like 7.0 degrees trimable horizontal stabilizer deflection to only 2.3 or so in cruise. You'd have to hold your trim switch for roughly 5 seconds before your aircraft would be controlable and not dive to the ground anymore. So I don't think its a good idea to make it optional to turn off that trim initialization.

    If you want to take car of the trim yourself its better to do a pattern training and not jump into final approach for example. If you select the parking position your takeoff trim will most likely not be set as well.

  • Request for Improvements

    That is being considered, thank you for your suggestion :)

    I have a question for the second request: under which circumstances do you want to have the trim stored? Because when you go to the location screen and select the approach or the takeoff some place on the map the trim is automatically set to a new value so that you don't need to trim. If some trim is not correct after you've selected one of these positions then we can just adjust the trim value without a need to save the trim setting. I'm guessing you want the trim to be saved when you are mid flight and exit out of the sim, right?

  • Let's make an Aircraft

    open meshes are not a problem.

    Any poly count will barely be an issue. As long as you stay below the half million mark is should be alright, above 1 million you're doing something wrong and above probably 3 million the first frame drops will be noticed. Maybe 5 million who knows. :D

    I'd estimate you should stay well 200k, so basically do what you want. :)

  • Additions to AFS2 (DVD)

    These are optional additions to the simulator. The high resolution texture pack gives you higher quality textures for larger regions, it's a lot of satellite images that take up a lot of space but increase the quality of the experience, but they would have been way to large to fit onto DVDs. You'd need probably another 10 or 15 DVDs for that.

  • Cockpit Gauge Needles animation

    Hi everyone using Ac3D and looking for the axes and pivots,

    here is the problem: Ac3D does not give us any axis or pivots that we could export for you, all vertices are in a global coordinate system so there is no pivot that we could extract and also no rotation axes.

    Is there some way to measure the axes and pivots in Ac3D itself? (I've never used Ac3D before, is there even such a thing as animating?)

    Maybe there is an option to select a single vertex and then copy its coordinates, then you'd at least have a pivot to work with. And with two points you could create an axis. (I have a tool for that which I could maybe publish, so that you don't need to do your own maths)

  • Most realistic zoom setting

    Each outside view (tower view, follow cam, etc.) has a different field of view setting in the main.mcf file, the same goes for all cockpit cameras. So in the pilot seat you can have a very narrow field of view, you can have a different fov in the copilot seat and finally you can have a different fov outside the aircraft. At least you should, my main config saves them individually and when I zoom inside the cockpit camera for the pilot seat no other view is affected.

  • Most realistic zoom setting

    This depends on a lot of factor. Personal taste is the biggest one. If you want things to be the same size on the monitor as in the real world you'll have to zoom in all the way. That's what I'm doing sometimes. But if I want to keep the instruments and the outside in view at the same time I'm forced to zoom out a bit, so depending on the aircraft that is sometimes further away but I try to be as close up as possible. Some people don't like this, I feel the scenery looks more realistic this way, like I'm used to in the real world. And all of the sudden the aircraft actually feels big. Zoomed out too far just feels like a game, its unrealistic, disturbs the view at the corners etc.

    I've had a discussion about this with my room mate lately. He always preverred wide field of view, I was always really narrow. Then when he first sat in a real world glider cockpit he had to admit that everything is much larger and much closer than what he was used to from the sim and said that the narrow field of view I was using comes much closer to reality. If you're ever in a real cockpit, I think you should try to count how many fingers it takes to cover up a typical gauge from where you're sitting (your arm stretched out in front of you). Now try to do that in front of your screen...

    I think its good to estimate, from your point of view to the monitor, what is your actual field of view angle, then try to match that in the sim.

    Quick scan through my main.mcf shows: 0.45, 0.67, 0.55, 0.88, 0.77 (probably the outside fixed view), 0.64, 0.60, 0.64, 0.7, 0.45, 0.36, tower 0.11, follow 0.36, so roughly 0.55 is my average.

  • Let's make an Aircraft

    That looks really good :)

    The horizontal stabilizer looks a bit too round I think :D

    By the way, if you do the landing light on the wing, can you do both sides? There is an option to do that in the real aircraft and I would love to install the left/right alternating flasher, could look very interesting 8)